Mad. Sq. Music: Erin McKeown and Lake Street Dive

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Erin McKeown has been touring the globe for the last 12 years as a writer, performer, and multi-instrumentalist with eight full-length records and three EPs under her belt. McKeown’s compelling and energy-packed stage show teamed with her seemingly effortless ability to bridge genres has garnered her international acclaim. She regularly collaborates and performs with her peers Andrew Bird, Anais Mitchell, Ben Sollee, Carrie Rodriguez, Mike Doughty, Amos Lee, and Josh Ritter. She has also performed at many of the world’s esteemed music festivals including Bonnaroo, Newport Folk, Glastonbury, and Oxegen. “Her playing is so muscular, her arrangements so well conceived that she succeeds brilliantly. As with all truly great guitarists, the wonder is less in her chops than her choices,” (Boston Globe).

Lake Street Dive, composed of drummer Mike Calabrese, bassist Bridget Kearney, vocalist Rachael Price, and trumpet-wielding guitarist Mike “McDuck” Olson, encompasses a myriad of possibilities within its members’ collective experiences, and the resultant music is a vivid, largely acoustic, groove-driven strain of indie-pop. Lake Street Dive makes the most of pop music virtues: solid, evocative song craft; propulsive grooves; and Price’s disarming, forthright vocals. However, it’s a personal strain of pop that is refracted through the band members’ rich backgrounds: a sinewy Motown bass line is reborn with woody heft on Kearney’s upright, Calabrese’s drumming mixes timekeeping with more adventurous jazz-inflected outbursts, McDuck’s nimble trumpet is an unexpectedly warm counterpoint to Price’s singing. It all makes for a sound with familiar roots, but with a slant that is entirely their own.